Digital Health Is Slow in Arising As Noted at CES this Year – Lack of Consumer Trust Is At the Top of the List and For Man

Posted Jan 10 2010 11:54am

This article pretty much sums it up and talks about the same issues I talk about here in detail. Consumers are not going to trust a digital healthcare system until a level of trust is secured and you can’t leave out the “human” side of healthcare, the relationship between the doctor and patient. Health insurance companies in particular don’t appear to resolve themselves to this fact and focus on profits only, so again as long as this model tries to co-exist with better care, nothing is going to work.

You can see that folks who create and work with data realize this by the quotes from the likes of Microsoft for goodness sakes, but non participating members of Congress don’t get it. The bean counter has not evolved to entail humans. There are also some good quotes here from Kaiser and when you stop and think about it, a non profit as Kaiser is not making the news with stories about dropping “unprofitable” patients, like we hear about Aetna, United Healthcare, Cigna and the likes. Do you think they might know something that the rest of the industry has not embraced yet, I think they might. We have companies selling our information out there and is one good reason to ask a ton of questions, it’s like Forest Gump health insurance in the fact that you just don’t know what you are going to get when the business model profit algorithms create a shift in procedures and cost analysis on your head.

I report on a lot of the digital devices coming out that report data and we all should be aware of how the for profit companies want to analyze and make big bucks on what pays a dividend. We have very few laws that protect us here and a Congress that has no clue, as they are non participants themselves. How would they feel getting a letter of cancellation based on a wellness program determining they are not cost effective? All you know what would hit the fan.

Who do we trust – our doctor. If the doctor doesn’t buy in, patients won’t do it either. You doctors have very good reason too not to buy in as they are in the process of getting educated too. I have not met one doctor who doesn’t complain about the red tape and doesn’t have a few stories to tell about battling health insurance carriers. I do some billing and I can tell you first hand it is a mess.

As noted from this year’s CES show, we are all very distracted too in not wanting to learn or get involved as it is too much of a burden for the consumer for the most part, we check out of all of the digital health issues and focus on getting our next Big Screen TV, rather than take a few minutes to see how we would better our healthcare. I read a comment on Twitter this week from John Moore of Chillmark stating there’s not much going on at CES as relates to healthcare. He was there at CES digging around to find some digital healthcare being represented and was having a hard time finding booths and information that related to more than just another big screen touch television being marketed, so in essence we focus on marketing, not healthcare. John also noted a big change in the 2009 HIMMS conference with a shift from clinical care to being all about the stimulus money and this year it appears that focus is even bigger with acquisition of Medical Banking from HIMMS.

“Those factors have nothing to do with technology, said John Moore, managing director of industry analysts Chilmark Research, who added a couple of more ways records can be compromised: by absent-minded employees who simply misplace them and by dishonest employees who may sell them to data thieves.”

John mentions “data thieves”, read the link below to see how data is bought and sold that relates to your well being and the medications you take, how will companies use your status of healthcare to make a buck, any wonder why consumers don’t trust, I rest my case here and if you search this blog you will find many more posts that give additional information on how your medical data is bought and sold for profit.

Myself, I try to carry the message to consumers to be sure and ask questions as by signing some contracts you could be waiving part of your privacy protection with a contract, not uncommon as there are dollar incentives out there for one to do this, but the company is covered stating they follow all the privacy rules, well that is until you sign a contract that waves this protection in one form or another, no laws here to protect you. It’s the game of the algorithmic business intelligence taking advantage of the illiterate.

So we end up with having to watch for the profiteering maneuvers trying to outweigh the efforts of moving towards good digital healthcare recordkeeping and sharing. The 2 sides don’t meet when you have to worry about how medical data can and will be used against you as a consumer, so most just stay focused with a potential buy of a new big screen TV and forgo the healthcare. Sad, but it is what it is as the layer of trust doesn’t exist and for good reason and until we can meet on that ground without a ton of empty promises, we are somewhat at a stand still point here. I work with data and understand how it is integrated, re-matched, queries run to re-identify information, been going on a long time and until we have an agency like the SEC for example that has the ability to audit and monitor all of this activity and audit to see who has run what and created such queries, the world of non trusting consumers will flourish.

Let’s revisit Harry Markopoulos on how this works, a whistleblower who knows his stuff and the blind eye turned by government offices that may lack the ability to perform such audits. He had the data but states nobody knew what to do with it, a sad reflection on where we stand today with government technology and their ability to build trust. The Madoff scheme is one prime example everyone can relate too and we might find some Ponzi schemes alive and well working in healthcare with regional turf wars and special interest groups with profitability working against better healthcare. It’s a sad state of affairs when banks are in essence ruling healthcare too.

We don’t trust banks as a whole so why in the world are we going to trust anything that is going to create more data to potentially be used against us in getting care? I like technology but also understand that the king pens today use it for profit and as along as this battle continues, consumer trust will not rise and actually could increase with education and knowledge, especially if you hang around this blog and read up occasionally.

The more you know about “data thieves” and their algorithms, the more you question what they will do with your data, as the words “trust me” when it comes to sheer profitability today does not exist and makes one wonder are they insured by an insurance or technology company? Non profits in health insurance could certainly make one huge difference with being off the stock market exchange. BD

David Cerino, general manager of the Consumer Health Solutions Group for Microsoft Corp., said consumers wouldn’t significantly endorse digital health care until providers met three conditions:

Transparency. Patients want to know exactly what’s being recorded and exactly who can and can’t see it.

Control. Patients want to have the final say on their care.

Security. Patients want to know that their records won’t be compromised as they’re shuttled from doctor to lab to hospital to insurer.

But until the individual consumer learns enough about digitization, those realities are irrelevant, experts said. And that means building a “chain of trust” for patients — specifically, for the “family health manager,” who is usually the mother in a family, said Cerino, of Microsoft.

In fact, said Anna-Lisa Silvestre, vice president of online services for Kaiser Permanente Inc., the nation’s largest health maintenance organization, it’s a misconception that data security is “all about technical risk.”

“You can never completely eliminate the human factor,” Silvestre said, adding that medical privacy was commonly breached because of enmity between divorcing couples, who might try to get hold of their spouses’ files as ammunition in settlement or child custody disputes.